Edward Timpson: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy). Durham is a beautiful city, in which I had the pleasure of spending three happy and I think reasonably productive years as a student. I am just sorry that I did not sample more of the music on offer outside the Ritzy nightclub when I was trying to work hard and get a good degree.
When the novelist Jules Verne wrote about the fictional Phileas Fogg’s journey “Around the World in 80 Days” almost 150 years ago, he must have believed it was the beginning of a golden era of ever-expanding travel. Although this adventurous tale was brought to life by Sir Michael Palin 30 years ago, the mass transportation of humans across the globe came to an abrupt end in the early months of 2020, since when it has been more like “Around the Kitchen in 180 Days”.
After a testy and at times tumultuous 2019, 2020 was meant to be so different—more business as usual. But here we are, over halfway through the year, with our plans thwarted, our hopes suspended and many of our dreams left unfulfilled. The drumbeat of familiarity has also been swept away, only just starting to re-find its rhythm. Whether it is travel, retail, hospitality, education or our families, it has all had far-reaching consequences. Yes, no Tokyo Olympics that were due to start this Friday, and no London marathon for me to run this April, but that all pales into insignificance compared with the economic, social, emotional and mental fallout that covid-19 has created, jabbing at the very heart of humanity, with births, deaths and marriages—our life’s compass points—all directly impacted.
It is the last of those—marriages—that I want briefly to address. With about 220,000 couples exchanging vows every year in England and Wales, and most tying the knot in the summer high season, the best-laid wedding plans of thousands of nearly-newlyweds for what should be the best day of their lives have been dealt the cruellest of blows—and this time no one can blame the British weather. With restrictions of 30 people present at wedding venues still in place, most are postponing or even cancelling their bookings, leaving a huge and potentially permanent dent in the wedding industry. This is an industry worth £10 billion to the UK economy, made up of 137,000 small and medium-sized businesses employing half a million people working as caterers and as specialists in planning, lighting, design, flowers, decoration, clothing, photography, entertainment and many other supply chain jobs.
The Government have been working hard to support the hospitality sector, with pubs and restaurants now open, backed by £30 billion-worth of schemes to help trigger economic activity, including the “eat out to help out” scheme, but for family-run businesses like the Cheshire-based Boutique Hotel Group in Eddisbury, the longer that the limitations on numbers at its three venues—Peckforton Castle, Nunsmere Hall and Inglewood Manor—remain in place, the greater the damage for it and for other local businesses that have contacted me, both financially and reputationally. To illustrate, since the start of lockdown through to the end of August, BHG will lose nearly £6 million in revenue thanks to the loss of 250 weddings, already leading to 25 staff redundancies. Should the status quo continue through September and October, which looks likely, another 124 weddings will go, as will a further £2.2 million in revenue—so the situation is getting beyond desperate. The business rates suspension and the furlough scheme, in particular, have been an absolute lifeline, but they cannot help to prop up the industry indefinitely. In any event, as the managing director of BHG, Christopher Naylor, told me: “Every month that our business is closed, even after taking into account the job retention scheme, it still costs £250,000 just to stand still.”
I therefore implore the Government, as a matter of urgency, to look again at the restrictions still in place for wedding venues like Peckforton Castle, which has ample capacity for 600 guests, or 300 covid-secure guests—a far cry from the limit of 30 still imposed—together with setting out a clear road map to reopening. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will send that message loud and clear on my and my constituents’ behalf to the Business Secretary and the Chancellor—both of whom I have also raised this with—and with the necessary vigour. With other venues such as pubs, museums, cinemas, zoos and sports halls now thankfully open, the justification for keeping wedding venues unusable is increasingly hard to maintain.
In the final chapter of “Around the World in 80 Days”, Fogg’s marriage to Aouda is postponed, not because of covid-19 but because it was on a Sunday—how times have changed. The wedding went ahead the next day, and, Verne reminds us, Fogg won something more important than the money from—spoiler alert—winning his bet; he had won
“a charming woman, who…made him the happiest of men!”
So let us hope that this is not the final chapter for our fantastic wedding industry and that it can bring happiness to many more couples now and in the future.